On Leadership, Random DJB Thoughts, The Times We Live In
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Continue to celebrate the good news!

As I wrote a few weeks ago, thanks to the Biden/Harris administration and Democrats all across the country, we are in the midst of an astonishing economic run in the U.S.


Jobs are rising, inflation is falling

When the June BLS jobs report came out we saw that it was another good one — 339,000 net new jobs, 432,000 with upward revisions from previous months. With this new data the monthly jobs tracker at the Hopium Chronicles now looks like this:

  • 33.8m jobs – 16 years of Clinton, Obama
  • 13.1m jobs – 28 months of Biden
  • 1.9m jobs – 16 years of Bush, Bush and Trump

Biden’s 13.1 million jobs is almost 7 times as many jobs as were created in the 16 years of the last 3 Republican Presidencies, combined.  

Let that sink in for a moment.

Joe Biden is the third consecutive Democratic President who has brought strong growth, lower deficits and American progress. The last three Republican Presidents all brought recession, higher deficits, American decline.

With Democrats Things Get Better

Inflation continues to fall and Larry Summers was wrong, the U.S. did not have to throw millions of Americans out of work to meet that goal.


Here’s a narrative you can start to use

If you want a narrative that points to the good news all around us, you can do much worse than this:

The American recovery from COVID has been the best of any advanced nation; economic growth remains robust; in recent months the unemployment, uninsured and poverty rates have hit record lows; the deficit has come way down; the President’s ambitious agenda to build things here at home has begun to have a very positive impact on the economy; real wages and incomes are in positive territory again, and inflation appears to have returned to a pre-pandemic, pre-Russian invasion of Ukraine and more sustainable place.

Through their grit, resilience, and hard work the American people have gotten through this rough patch in our history, and have once again made the American economy the envy of the world. . . .

But let’s be very clear — far more is going right today in America than wrong. It is time for those who spend so much time talking down this great country to join us in acknowledging the progress we’ve made, for this progress isn’t just the progress of Democrats or Joe Biden, it is American progress to be celebrated by all.

More Good News on Inflation

Not that you’d ever know any of this from listening to the mainstream media.

These are the headlines on The Washington Post and The New York Times on June 14th. I put the Post at the top because it is the least egregious of the two. For the first ever arraignment of a former U.S. president, it sticks with the basic — if unsurprising — facts. Trump pleaded not guilty. Whoopee do. Not exactly news, but truthful. In the left-hand column the Post also acknowledges that inflation is falling, yet they can’t leave well enough alone so the sub-heading has to being with “But…” How about after saying that overall inflation continues to drop, add “And this is the plan that President Biden designed … and its working!”

But that Times headline … oh my goodness. Is the real news here that there was a “momentous scene” at the arraignment, when there clearly wasn’t such a scene at all? Do you have to include a picture of Trump coming off his private jet with an American flag painted on the tail piece as if it is Air Force One? Sinclair Lewis never said the famous quote attributed to him — “When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” — but it is nonetheless a pretty good description of today’s wannabe authoritarians.

Here’s what’s missing from all the coverage: “Trump’s lawbreaking was so blatant, so inexcusable, so dangerous, that DOJ had no choice but to indict.” He stole our nuclear secrets, for crying out loud.

As rock-solid conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote yesterday,

There is not an Attorney General of either party who would not have brought today’s charges against the former president.

No, the mainstream media would rather be engaged with “newswashing” as one astute Post reader noted:

Noting that Trump’s rhetoric follows the pattern of abusers everywhere (DARVO: deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender) is a pretty handy way to take care of just about 100% of everything he says.

And oh, my goodness, Fox News Corporation, which “has been hemorrhaging viewers since it fired Tucker Carlson” seems okay with paying out more than three-quarters of a billion dollars for lying, and then turning around and lying some more. The threat to the bottom line might have been behind its chyron attacking Biden by claiming “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.”

But Fox News is not news. Stop treating them as if they were.

Heather Cox Richardson reminds us of the history behind NOT holding the powerful accountable to the rule of law.

The willingness of government officials to ignore the rule of law in order to buy peace gave us enduring reverence for the principles of the Confederacy, along with countless dead Unionists, mostly Black people, killed as former Confederates reclaimed supremacy in the South. It also gave us the idea that presidents cannot be held accountable for crimes, a belief that likely made some of the presidents who followed Nixon less careful about following the law than they might have been if they had seen Nixon indicted.

Holding a former president accountable for an alleged profound attack on the United States is indeed unprecedented, as his supporters insist. But far from being a bad thing to stand firm on the rule of law at the upper levels of government, it seems to fall into the category of “high time.”


It is easy to get frustrated but it is up to us to continue to say, “We’re here to celebrate all the good that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, the Democrats, and the American people are doing.”

More to come…

DJB

Image by Jean Martinelle from Pixabay

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I am David J. Brown (hence the DJB) and I originally created this personal newsletter more than fifteen years ago as a way to capture photos and memories from a family vacation. Afterwards I simply continued writing. Over the years the newsletter has changed to have a more definite focus aligned with my interest in places that matter, reading well, roots music, heritage travel, and more. My professional background is as a national nonprofit leader with a four-decade record of growing and strengthening organizations at local, state, and national levels. This work has been driven by my passion for connecting people in thriving, sustainable, and vibrant communities.

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